A Far Wilder Magic

by Allison Saft

Ten paces away from the wraparound porch, a guttural yowl shatters the silence. He freezes, and just then, a red dog rounds the side of the house and charges straight for him. Beneath his fear, there’s a glimmer of relieved acceptance. Mauling, he thinks, is a preferable death to shame.

Maggie stares at the photo for a long time with a beetle-browed expression. When she looks up at him again, her stare is hard, assessing, like she’s trying to boil him down to his very soul. It makes him feel like a curiosity at a curbside menagerie. For the first time, he notices how big her eyes are. She looks like a very serious owl.

Maggie Welty looks like the kind of girl who would sooner kill a man than admire one.

Weston Winters is as good as having a second, less well-behaved dog.

But knowing the hunt has officially arrived worsens the unease she hasn’t been able to shake since she looked into that beast’s horrible eyes. She’s felt fear like that only once before, but the memory of it lies in shards on the floor of her mind, too sharp to pick up and handle. The sulfuric smell of alchemy, her mother’s blond hair puddled in blood, the sob she loosed when Margaret dragged her from the lab, and …

“We did, and I told him to watch himself. If he pulls anything funny—if he so much as lifts a finger to you—you say the word. I’ll be up there faster than you can blink.” This time, her smile comes easy. “If he pulls anything funny, I’ll shoot him myself.”

“Exactly! Alchemy is supposed to be about change and progress, but everyone in power has forgotten that. None of them will change a damn thing as long as they benefit from how things are.” Bitterness coats his every word. “With real progressive policies, no six-year-old would go to bed hungry. No one would lose a parent to unsafe working conditions. No one would have to fit six people into a two-bedroom apartment. So there. Are you happy now?”

Sighing, Margaret goes to investigate the commotion. She drapes herself over the second-floor banister just in time to see Trouble come tearing around the corner with a shoe dangling from his mouth by the laces. He drops into a play bow with the enthusiasm of a dog five years younger. A moment later, Wes skids across the floor with a wicked gleam in his eye. “Caught you, you bastard. Give it up.” Trouble growls, his tail wagging with anticipation.

“Trouble, drop it.” Without a moment’s hesitation, he does. It clatters to the floor, shining with leather polish and saliva. As she descends the stairs, both hound and boy gaze up at her with something like reverence. “How did you do that?” “He knows you’re playing.” She crouches to retrieve his errant shoe and scratch behind Trouble’s ears. “Hounds will only listen to you if they respect you.” “And how do you go about getting a hound’s respect?” “By being more respectable.” She hands the shoe back to him. “Maybe you can start by doing something better with your time. The alchemy exposition is at the end of the week.”

“God, no. My parents were born there, but they moved when it started getting too crowded. Banvish immigrants breed like rabbits, and more of them pour off the boat every day. I don’t know how you live with it.” Jaime pauses, as though he’s waiting for Wes’s reaction. When he gives him nothing, he shrugs. “Besides, you can’t compete with the Yu’adir if you want to maintain any kind of integrity. They cheapen their goods so they can make more money.” “A very impressive account,” Wes says, “for someone who’s never removed his head from his own ass.”

She isn’t jealous of Annette exactly. The only thing enviable about her position is that Wes will soon grow bored of her and Margaret will never be free of him. No, it isn’t Wes’s attention that she wants. Not attention from him, anyway. She’s lived here her entire life, but few in Wickdon look at her like they look at Wes. Those who don’t hate her for her sullied blood only pity her. She resents him, unfair as it may be. Even though she knows she never will be, she wants to be something more than her grief and fear. But she won’t admit that to him.

“What?” Wes draws in his breath, determined to keep his voice even. “If you cared, why didn’t you stand up to him? You were right there when Harrington started mouthing off about immigrants and the Yu’adir, and you didn’t say a word. If you cared, shouldn’t that bother you?” Annette flushes. “You saw what happens when you stand up to him.” “Nothing,” he says sharply. “Nothing happens. All he did was spout more hateful nonsense. The only difference is that it’d be directed at you instead.” “And what should I have done? He’s my friend.” He can see she’s upset, but he can’t stop himself from pushing. “Maybe you should get better friends.”

What this town has done to Maggie is a sin. But I can’t end up like her. As long as I’m stuck here, silence is my only option. My friends are all I have.” “You know, my parents are Banvish immigrants. They were poor farmers in Banva, and we’re still poor here. I’ve dealt with people like Harrington all my life, so yeah, forgive me if I judge you for worrying about what your stupid friends would think of you. The world’s bigger than this town.”

Words she’s heard whispered all her life but no one has dared say directly to her. Words she’s sure Wes has endured many times before as well. He appears at her shoulder. “I’m sorry.” “Why are you sorry?” “Because you don’t deserve to be treated this way.” “Neither do you.” Silent understanding passes between them. All her life, she’s wanted to be small, to be unseen. But people like Jaime have never allowed it and they never will. I’m so sick of it, Wes told her the other night. I’m sick of enduring it. Aren’t you?

But it wasn’t her choice. Because if it was, if the woman her mother became crawled out from some rotten place within her, then Margaret doesn’t know what to do. She doesn’t know how to suck that poison out. Alchemy corrupted Evelyn. It had to have. Otherwise, what kind of person did that make her? What kind of mother?

“She isn’t always like this. She’s just…” She digs the heels of her hands into her eyes. “Things might be different this time. And without me, I don’t know what would happen to her. She’s already lost everything. It would be cruel.” “She managed fine without you for almost four months. What happens to her isn’t your responsibility.” Although he doesn’t mean it to, frustration creeps into every word. “Margaret, it’s not your job to take care of her when she never gave you the same courtesy. This isn’t how love is supposed to be. Can’t you see that?”

For so long, Evelyn has been her entire world and the god of it, too. There are punishments far worse than being struck. To be forsaken and unloved—that is the worst fate of all.

Out in the middle of the pack, he spies a familiar copper coat—and Trouble’s ears flopping behind him as he runs. He’s lumbering in comparison to the small, lean beagles and foxhounds, but he keeps pace with them.

That's right! Because he is a good boy!

But he’s not playing to win, Wes realizes. He’s playing for them to lose.

And doesn't that feel timely.

“Got it out of your system, Harrington? You threw the whole damn hunt for this chance?” “Better to let it go than let it fall to you.”

“There’s no stemming the tide of people like you, no matter how many quotas are put in place. Soon enough, even places like Wickdon will be overrun. But I’ll be damned if I don’t protect our way of life for as long as I can.” “And you’ve done a fine—” He levels the shotgun at him. “I don’t want to hear one more smart-ass comment from you. I’m serious.” “So am I. You’ve made your stand, so why don’t we call it even? You’re not a murderer.” “And I won’t be by anyone’s estimation, even if I kill you. Do you think anyone will think twice about it if you don’t come back? Do you think they’ll miss you? It’ll be two less vermin in this country.”

“Do you really think we can ever be even? My parents were driven from the city by her people. I lost Annette because of you. You! A Banvishman with nothing. You take and take what you don’t deserve, and you’ll leave this country a shell by the time you’re done with it. Nothing but a puppet for your pope and your sham of a religion. This is just as much a service to this country as killing that monster is.”

That rhetoric sounds familiar

He can’t solve a systemic problem like this. And it’s not enough to believe in a better future, as though it’s something as inevitable as God himself. He has to demand it. He has to work for it. And even though Jaime deserves to suffer, even though he will never change, even though he hates him, Wes can’t bring himself to wield this stolen moment of superiority like a club. If he wants to change the world and kill the hala with a clear conscience, he has to do this on his own terms.

For so long, she has survived. Now, she wants to live.

“Is the stone truly what you want?” Margaret asks. “It won’t make any of this right. It won’t bring him back, and even if it does, will it even matter after everything you’ve thrown away? Or did you always love the memory of him more than you loved the reality of me?”

“I’ve always been right here. Growing up with you—it felt like starving. For everything. Your affection, your protection, your interest. I thought if I never needed anything, if I never bothered you, if I took care of us until you finished your work, you’d love me. But it didn’t work. You never saw me. You never cared.”